Girl found safe - Kudos to Police and Fire

Last night, Hopkinton Officer Philip Powers, the School Resource Officer for all of the schools, was the individual who found the missing girl, asleep in the woods, at EMC Park. There was about to be, according to individuals on the scene, an upgrade to a full scaled search, like the kind we see on TV, shoulder to shoulder, and at the speed of a crawl.
While it is possible that the next public safety official walking in those woods would have also found her, that shouldn't take away from the gratitude the community owes Officer Powers. His discovery was not a chance encounter.
Officer Powers is the one who snatched the young man from the roof of the High School in 2006. That 19 year-old holding the blood-covered bat may or may not have known that the drop to the ground on the west side of the building from the peak is a hard four stories, but it was not lost on the public safety officials who responded. Officer Powers turned his education, training and experience into creative thinking and likely saved that young man's life. He showed what he is made of.
And there is one slightly built 12 year-old girl who walked away from her Mom in a huff last night who may not understand the gravity of her situation until she is older. But is up to us adults to give credit where credit is due. Thanks to all of the emergency personell involved.
And thanks to Officer Powers for stealing the show once again.

Please feel free to respond. Flamers please use Town Talk

Marijuana: Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down, or "Don't Bother Me, Dude?"

Looking at the police log can give people an idea of the state of the culture, and talking to young people can be even more enlightening. A lot of people are smoking pot, young and old. A lot of young people, whose parents smoke marijuana, will recognize the smell at their first illicit party at the home of parents who think their kid would never throw a party while they are in Maine vacationing from their parental duties; and they will smoke it.

What chance does a kid have when dad cautions "cops" to no one in particular while slowing down before passing the police cruiser on the side of the road. Or when dad takes the ten year-old shopping, but forgets to take the two cereal boxes out of his hands, and no one at the register notices, but, after opening the car door for his child and noticing the oversight, says "Look what we won."

So, if just to save children from their parents, an argument could be made for decriminalization of the leafy weed. The HopNews poll was 2-1 in favor of decriminalization of the illicit substance. And although the majority of respondents felt that way, would they have voted if the method of drug delivery, assuming the same amount of drug as in one joint, were by pill instead of smoke? A pill would be less dangerous, because smoke from a marijuana cigarette is said to deliver all of the evils of a cigarette, and much more.

Democratic Representative Barney Frank believes the government should stay out of people's lives. He favors decriminalization of marijuana.

But decriminalization is not the same as legalization.

If the government legalized the drug for adult use, it could make a bounty in taxes! And as an unintended consequence, the sales of "munchies" would also increase. People would drive more slowly. Of course, being a psychotropic drug, there would be some professions that marijuana use, even if legal and purchased over the counter, should be verboten. I can't imagine a police officer officer saying, "License and registration, dude."

Or the teacher starting the day with, "Yo, whaddup, Holmes?"

But the main problem with marijuana use, legal or illegal, is the lethargy that overcomes some of its users — and most of its abusers.

"Let's smoke a joint and lift some weights, and then do our homework together" I doubt it.

More like, "Let's eat some more Hostess cupcakes and drink another gallon of milk while we watch TV with the sound off and the radio blaring, and make really dumb YouTube movies featuring ourselves beating each other up and doing other dangerous things."

Of course the side effects of pot are legend, especially for young people. Unfortunately, 18 is the age when young people have the right to get addicted to nicotine and take years, not only off of their lives, but off of the quality of life. It really only takes one time, the first. And although marijuana is not as addictive as nicotine, it can cause more damage to a developing mind, because that is what it affects.

Cigarettes have never been attributed to influencing a person's mental development, but abuse of drugs has long been known to slow or even stop a young person's maturing process. It could be very well that if marijuana becomes readily accessible to the masses, legal or decriminalized, it should be kept out of the hands of anyone under 21 — or even 25.

Barney Frank wants to keep the government out of people's personal business. But our society isn't the same society that he envisions, with people doing whatever they want. It is a society that wants its children to have all of the tools it needs entering adulthood. It is a society where some children, more than other generations, need society, police, and the courts to take up the slack from absent parents, single parent homes, and the peer pressure that those kids are especially susceptible to.

I don't think kids need marijuana to complicate their lives. Hopefully, they will be well protected if any changes are made.

Please feel free to post. ~Robert

And Now, the News...

And now, the news...
Recently, Clark B. McClelland, former Spacecraft Operator of the NASA Space Shuttle Fleet wrote an article detailing a conversation with Lt. Col. Ellison Onizuka, mission specialist on the Space Shuttle, who said that before being with NASA, his Air Force group had been shown films at McLelland , ala Roswell, of large-eyed, large-headed small-bodied dead aliens lying on a slab in a hospital-type room. Onizuka was a crew member of he Shuttle Challenger, which blew up in 1986.

UFO researcher Leonard Stringfield claims to have been given 50 accounts of alien evidence, including movies of crashed crafts, alien technology, and dead alien bodies. It seems that aliens always seem to crash in the desert. We know they can't escape that environment, because of the gigantic Gila monsters bred by the Air Force that have been trained to capture them.

Some scientists say that in the absence of visual stimuli, the brain invents things imaginatively. South American natives who saw the Conquistadors on horses, never having seen the animals before, and seeing them carrying soldiers, the best horsemen in the world, attributed supernatural characteristics to the long-in-the-nose creatures.

And when aliens abduct people, it is usually from a deserted back road in New Hampshire on a Moonlit night. The people remember being examined by alien doctors and then transported back to their vehicles with a missing two-hour memory, and sores where the aliens inserted probes.

Many UFO/Aliens-visited-Earth supporters point to the Great Pyramids of Egypt and Easter Island as proof of alien visits. However,anyone who has seen the movie 10,000 BC has no reason to doubt that ancient man trained woolly mammoth/mastodon hybrids to carry the large stones up ramps to build the pyramids. That is, before a young man, known as The Hunter, demands of a sabre-toothed tiger that he support his quest to topple the old man who has enslaved thousands of the ancient people. And all we know is that the old man is old- very old. At least 60. But of course, because of our popular culture and the movie's insistence on showing the audience only a portion of his face, his very old face, we can rightly conclude that the mystery man is indeed an alien. And they all lived happily ever-after.

This argument about whether we have been visited by aliens is as old as Davy Crockett. But it is easy to take sides on this issue for anyone who puts a good deal of thought and deliberation, and scientific study of the evidence: It is unquestionable that aliens have visited our planet.

There can be no other explanation for Easter Island, hieroglyphics, Peruvian Nazca Lines, crop circles, geoglyphs, Dolly Parton, Nathan Lane and Barry Manilow.

In other news...
A surgeon was fired after he "appeared to fall asleep" during liposuction. Wow, we'd lose a Selectman immediately if that were enforced here! Oh, and speaking of Selectmen, they are supposedly crafting a letter to the Governor over the impasse regarding the Waster Water Treatment Facility on Fruit Street to ask him to speak to a judge. To do what? Intervene in a court case? Influence a state division? There are, at last count, four appeals of one type or another. Well, I'd like to believe they know better, but Chairman Herr said we would all know in due time what the letter was about, because the case that the letter refers to is in litigation, and they cannot speak of it. Until then, we'll have to rely on unofficial sources.

Elsewhere in the news...
Civil unions will now be allowed among inmates in New Hampshire. One person who demands more punishment be meted out to inmates, said they should be allowed to get married.

That's the news for now... People may comment

The Storm Last Night

The emergency services did a great job last night with multiple calls about lightning strikes, alarms, fires about people being struck. Good job folks!